Hi everyone, welcome to my blog! I am a UK volunteer with voluntary service overseas and I'll be living in Rwanda in a small town called Nzige. Nzige is in Rwamagana district to the east of the country towards Tanzania.I'll be going out to Rwanda as an education volunteer to work on UNICEF's child friendly schools campaign. by teaching in a teacher training college and setting up a resource centre.

Friday, 21 January 2011

An emotional day

I can’t believe its Friday already and I’ve been here for 6 days. I leave for my placement next Wednesday and I still feel like I’ve got lots to take in. Today we visited the Gisozi Genocide memorial where the remains of 250,000 genocide victims are buried in Kigali. It was a very emotional experience, and not one person from our group was able to walk out of there with a dry eye. The children’s memorial section was particularly harrowing and very difficult to look at. Seeing a photo of a lovely, happy 4 year old, reading that she loves chocolate and playing with her friends and then reading the horror of how she died just left me speechless. It was a struggle to make any kind of sense of it all.

Most people who were alive in 1994 have experienced some kind of trauma and many have witnessed horrors beyond my imagination. But then when you go back out on the street and you see children playing with a skipping rope and women fetching water you forget the horror which these people have lived through. I have huge admiration for the Rwandan people and what they have achieved in the past 15 years. They are amazing, and they are trying very hard to live in peace and build a better future for Rwanda. I feel lucky to be here and I hope I can help this place in some small way.